seven more people to learn what we already knew and had forgotten. >> could the "columbia" crew have been saved just somehow? and in your mind and heart and professional opinion, was every available option exhausted? like and when i say saved, i mean like "apollo 13." >> ed, that's what people were hoping for. after the disaster, my colleagues, and i had left mission control at that point. i had already gone off into private consulting on flight safety because i was tired of the way nasa was decaying. but people who were still there told me they wished they had the warning. if they had ten days warning, early in the flight, had seen the hole in the wing. that would have mobilized all their energies and the whole country's and the world's energies. they would have tried to find ways to macgyver the wing and find something on board to stick in the whole. they had to find ways to get the other ship that was being canted down into space sooner. and if they didn't have enough air on board, they would have found ways to get other rockets from other countries. and there were some available, to throw fly canisters up into space where the shuttle could have chased them down and grabbed them before the

shuttle's own power ran out. those things might have happened. in hindsight, the accident investigation board looked at them and couldn't really figure out any way that was surely going to work. but they would have tried. >> yeah. >> well, a story that surrounds american heros who were lost doing their best for america. james oberg, thank you so much for your time tonight. i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> that's "the ed show." i'm ed schultz. "the rachel maddow show" starts right now. >> good evening. and happy super bowl sunday, even though it's not your team. >> neither one of them. >> i know. >> but i'll probably be a good sport and watch them anyway. >> i probably will too. thanks for staying with us for the next hour. four years ago at this time when president obama was just starting his first term, news networks, including this one, made a somewhat unusual decision to show live on tv the arrival of one of the new cabinet secretaries at the department that she had just been appointed to lead.

to broadcast live essentially a cabinet secretary's first day on the job. the reception that that cabinet secretary got that day was raucous. [ applause ] [ cheering ] a cabinet secretary starting work, right? it's not your typical multiple network life news event. but hillary clinton was never just some cabinet secretary, right? well, today, four years later at the start of the second term of the obama administration it was a similar scene for hillary clinton as she said goodbye to the same state department employees from almost the same

spot where they welcomed her four years ago. >> now it's my great honor to introduce one last time the 67th secretary of state of the united states of america, hillary rodham clinton. [ cheering and applause ] >> oh. >> secretary clinton still greeted like a rock star today at the agency she has led for the past four years. hillary clinton, of course, is not just somebody who came in a very close second to barack obama in trying to win the democratic party's presidential nomination, who then got a high-ranking cabinet post as a consolation prize. no, hillary clinton is really her own thing. her career in public life, in public office is unlike anybody else in american history. she went from being an accomplished lawyer in her early career to being the first lady of arkansas. she then became a very high profile first lady of the united states for her husband's two terms in office. she was the first modern first lady to turn that role into a policy job and the first attempt at health reform. she went on to weather her

husband's in-office infidelity scandal and impeachment in office. she became a senator from the state of new york and then of course that historic and very hard fought race for the democratic presidential nomination, concluding with barack obama winning the presidency, and then him nominating hillary clinton to be the highest profile secretary of state that our country probably has ever had. and we have had a lot of very high profile secretaries of state. >> so it's been quite a challenging week saying goodbye to so many people. and knowing that i will not have the opportunity to continue being part of this amazing team, but i am so grateful that we've had a chance to contribute in each of our ways to making our country and our world stronger,

safer, fairer, and better. those of you who are staying, as many of you will, please know that i hope you will redouble your efforts to do all that you can to demonstrate unequivocally why diplomacy and development are right up there with defense. how when we think about who we are as americans, it's because we are united and committed across our government to do whatever is required to fulfill the missions we have assumed as public officials and public servants. >> right up there with defense. that is one of the big ideas of the obama presidency, right? essentially, reorienting how america deals with the world

away from the u.s. military and toward u.s. diplomacy. to upscale our soft power capacity as a country so we have more options beyond just the option of force. this president did a lot to advance that idea simply by putting somebody as high profile as hillary clinton in the job of america's head diplomat. but the overall goal of upscaling state, upscaling diplomacy and development so they are right up there with defense, like she said today, that is widely regarded as a goal that is not yet realized. secretary clinton alluded to that fact today when she said she now plans to become an advocate for that cause from the outside. it is, frankly, easy to imagine that as the core for her return to public life and politics for hillary clinton at some point, but we shall see. the secretary also reflected today on how she is really leaving public life for the first time in a very long time. and she suggested that that might make her a little lonely. >> i am very proud to have been secretary of state.

i will miss you. i will probably be dialing ops just to talk. >> dialing ops. want to know what ops? this is ops. ah, this is the state department's nerve center, better known as the operation center, better known as ops. this is the place where for the last four years hillary clinton could call any hour 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to find out what the heck was going on anywhere in the world. the operation center is sort of legendary. it was created by jfk in 1961. it is essentially the secretary of state's on-call lifeline to events breaking anywhere in the world. they consider their time zone to be the time wherever the secretary is anywhere in the world, secretary time. and on a day like today, even with a handoff from secretary clinton to the new secretary, on a day like today, the ops center would have been very busy. news today of a suicide bomb

attack at the u.s. embassy in ankara in turkey. no americans were hurt or killed, but one of the people who was wounded in the blast was a turkish reporter who was reportedly at the embassy to meet with the u.s. ambassador. the turkish government is blaming known members of a marxist group they say has operated in the country since the 1970s. in egypt today protesters hurling firebombs through the estate of mohamed morsi's presidential palace, taking place on the date of the uprising that overthrew mubarak. vice president biden in europe, and while he is there the syrian government is warning they may be about to launch an attack on israel in retaliation for an israeli air strike that took place inside syria a couple of days ago. and if that's not enough on the plate, we also still have a navy ship stuck on a world heritage site coral reef in our ally the philippines. and oh, by the way, north korea is gearing up for what may be yet another nuclear test. and they say that we are the

reason they are doing it there is a lot going on in the world. secretary of state's a hard job, if not the hardest job in the united states government other than the presidency. you're responsible for so much. hillary clinton reflected on the breadth of responsibilities for a secretary of state during the exit interview that she did yesterday with the ap. but in that interview, she also reflected on our own country's governing capacity. look at what she said. this is how the ap wrote it up. "secretary of state hillary rodham clinton is leaving office with a slap at the critics of the obama administration's critics of the handling of the september attack on a u.s. diplomatic mission in libya. there are some people in politics and the press who can't be confused by the facts. they just will not live in an evidence-based world. and that is regrettable. it is regrettable for our political system and for the people who serve our government in very dangerous, difficult circumstances." "they will not live in an evidence-based world." hillary clinton there talking

about the conservative effort to treat the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi as not just an attack on our consulate, but as some sort of obama administration conspiracy, or at least scandal. that effort led south carolina republican senator lindsey graham this week to say that he think hillary clinton, quote, got away with murder. the same effort led rand paul of kentucky to do this during secretary of state clinton's senate testimony on the matter last week. >> my question is, is the u.s. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to turkey out of libya? >> to turkey? i --ly have to take that question for the record. nobody's ever raised that with me. >> according to senator rand paul, the secret key to understanding what happened to ambassador chris stevens in benghazi is that a ghost secret boatful of weapons was leaving

libya for turkey. and so the ambassador had to be killed to cover that up? maybe? because cia helicopters, boats, ghosts, i don't know. rand paul talked than theory that he has cooked up. he talked about that theory after that hearing to who else, but the website "world net daily." rand did an interview with "world net daily" and told them he doesn't have any proof about this theory that guns are being smuggled out of libya into turkey, and that somehow explains what was going on there. but he wanted to enter that conspiracy theory into the congressional record anyway. "world net daily" is where united states senator rand paul went to go talk about his conspiracy secret boat theory about benghazi after the hearing. just for the record, this is the "world net daily" front page. see what the halo is? this is their current issue. inside you can read an article titled "obama's muslim childhood" by daniel pipes in which the renowned islam expert presents overwhelming evidence that the president of the united states who claimed before the

election he was never a muslim was in fact born and raised a muslim. no way, way. no way, way. world net dally is where senator rand paul, i repeat, went to talk about his boat to turkey theory about why it happened. also, the guy who came in second in the republican presidential nominating contest this past year, rick santorum, his new job is that he is a columnist for world net daily. rand paul is being touted by the supposedly serious conservative heritage foundation as the big speaker next week on reagan's birthday where he is going to give his manifesto on what republican foreign policy should be. that's going to be next week on ronald reagan's birthday, rand paul. but, you know, it's fitting, because we're coming up on reagan's birthday. and did you hear about the horrible obama muslim marxist thing about his kenyan home? did you hear?

>> this is one wall that probably shouldn't be torn down. this apartment building used to be the home of a young ronald reagan. it was denied landmark status, and the university of chicago is ready to demolish it. the university is also trying to become the site of president obama's presidential library. that's drawing strong concerns the university might turn president reagan's former house into a parking lot for an obama library. >> did you hear about that? chicago close ties with the obamas, all of them, tearing down ronald reagan's boyhood home in order to make a parking lot for barack obama's presidential library. did you hear? did you hear? see, here it is on drudge. reagan's home could become parking lot for obama library. here it is on something called newsmax. reagan's childhood home to become parking lot for obama library. really? is this really happening? >> no, no. this is really not happening. i mean, in the evidence-free right-wing world, it is true, and they all link to each other. but nowhere else is it true,

including in the actual world. but the actual world is not their world. when that reporting is the supposedly straight news from fox news, when the senate foreign relations committee sends its republican members to world net daily to go talk about foreign policy ideas, this is their world. this is not the fringe. this is where they live. governing the united states is a really hard job. representing the united states in the world is a really, really hard job. today john kerry was officially sworn in to take over that job from hillary clinton. and he got to what amounts from a really well informed warning from his predecessor about the difficulties of that job. the evidence-based world is a hard enough place to live and to operate for us as a nation without half of our domestic politics being dominated by the perceived desire to defend against the muslim obama jihad on ronald reagan's childhood home. are we hampered as a nation in our ability to address real problems in the evidence-based world if half of the people in politics do not live in that world? and if so, how does that get

fixed? joining us now is chris hayes, who all of you will see again at 8:00 a.m. eastern tomorrow, because that's when he starts his show "up with chris hayes" here on msnbc. hi, chris. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> muslim jihad on president ronald reagan's childhood home. is she also diagnosing an american problem that should or could be fixed? >> it's -- yes. it should be fixed. and i don't know how to fix it. but i can tell you one place where it is a huge problem. and it's the biggest global problem we have, which is getting a climate change regime. i was talking to someone in washington, d.c. involved with climate negotiations for the u.s. government. now, if we're going to have an actual treaty, okay, that governs everyone's emissions, which is ultimately what we're going to have to get, you have to take that tommy v home to a senate and get 66 votes. everyone knows who occupies the u.s. senate. they know half the

representatives roughly, a little less than half are committed to this kind of denialism, which is completely out of step with the rest of the world. you can go down the list of countries, right? and it's very hard to credibly make a case that you're going to be able to go home and sell a climate treaty to a domestic political audience that everybody, they're not dummies, they understand, india, china, all the other countries that have to do with it, they understand what the modern republican party is. and they know that that cannot be sold to 66 senators in the united states senate so long as there are enough republicans to block it. >> so it interferes with our ability to take any sort of leadership role on an issue like that because of our domestic essential cramp from not being able to process that information? >> right. and people, look, in the world of international affairs, you know, other countries study our domestic politics. they understand exactly what these dynamics are. so you can try to say, well, we're going to be really tough about this, and yes, we're credible. we can go home. we can go get this carbon

regime. everybody knows that's not the case. because it's manifestly not the case. because you have people like lindsey graham who was for a carbon regime before he reneged on it going around saying they're not going to support it. >> republicans threatened to hold up chuck hagel's nomination this week over benghazi. next week there is more hearings. leon panetta, the outgoing secretary is going to testify there. secretary clinton already testified there. is there anything that can be done at this point by secretary panetta or anybody else to convince republicans that it wasn't a secret ghost ship to turkey or some other conspiracy? is there any way to fact chilly disprove what they want to believe about it? >> this is going to go down as one of the right-wing myths about america that are never going to die there are a certain core that are going to keep banging the drum. at some point perhaps someone will nudge the people who are pursuing this say we actually have real problems in north africa there is an intervention happening in mali. there are substantive issues on the table. stop talking about this. but it is so hermetically sealed in that world.

>> yeah. >> that i don't see them getting out of it, other than someone making some sort of crass political judgment that this is no longer bringing the benefits that they thought it would. >> on the issue of what secretary clinton said today about bringing diplomacy and development up there so they're seen right as alongside with the defense. we know that's a goal of the obama administration. it may be their most ambitious goal. they haven't made much progress toward it, even with somebody as high profile as hillary clinton being in that job. will john kerry being there have the opportunity for them to go forward? >> i'm so glad you played that clip, because i thought that line was so powerful and important. how far we are institutionally and the sea process inside the white house and the relative weight of defense in state. >> yes. >> and i think the single most important thing to getting us here is something you have written about a tremendous amount which is we need to as a country declare our state of war over. as long as we are in an active state of war, the center of gravity will be with the war

machine, will be with the war planners, will be with the pentagon. it is only when the nation views itself as being at peace that diplomacy can take some kind of equal footing. until we get to place where we do something as dramatic as repealing or refusing to reauthorize, the authorization of the use of military force and we end our hot wars, when we have a transparent discussion about what our activities are in terms of drones and targeted killing, only at the point the nation decides to call itself at peace can diplomacy actually ascend to some kind of parity. unless and until we reach that moment, it is impossible, politically and institutionally to get there. >> at some point i want to talk about when they announce in the spring that the u.s. is going to transition to no longer being in the lead role in afghanistan when they make that announcement this spring. i want to talk to you about whether or not it's significant if they're going to rename the operation in afghanistan, whether operation enduring freedom.

>> that's really interesting. >> that will be our next conversation. >> hopefully before then. >> okay. chris hayes, thanks. chris hayes hosts "up with chris hayes" weekends. you have to watch. lots to come. stay with us.

before i get too far into this next story, i want to show you this. ♪ >> that is arkansas state senator jason rapert, a tea

party republican elected in the great tea party wave of 2010. and he apparently can play the living daylights out of a fiddle. wow. also, he gets stuff done in arkansas. last night on the show we reported about a new bill passed yesterday by the arkansas senate that would effectively ban abortion in the state. the bill was sponsored by jason rapert, the fiddler there. a legislator pointed out to him if his bill becomes law, doctors would need to do an internal vaginal ultrasound in order to determine which very few arkansas women would be eligible for their constitutional rights anymore. the senator asked him, quote, can you imagine what kind of feeling that would cause inserted into a woman? quote, no, rapert replied. according to the local "times" newspaper, "no, i can't imagine what kind of feeling that would cause." and then they voted for his bill. so that was arkansas, just so far this week. but then today, hmm, newly uncovered video of the same senator, jason rapert from 2011. >> i wonder sometimes when they invited all the muslims to come into the white house and had a little ramadan supper, when our

president could not take the time to go attend a national prayer breakfast, i wonder what he stands for. you know what they told me that what you say -- excuse me, what you do speaks so loudly that what you say i cannot hear. i hear you loud and clear, barack obama. you don't represent the country that i grew up with. and your values is not going to save us. we're going to try to take this country back to the lord. we're going to try to take this country back to conservatism. and we're not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in. >> "we're not going to allow

minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in." not exactly sure what he means by that. president obama has also attended the national prayer breakfast every year. so that part was just wrong. we called senator jason rapert today and wrote to him, hoping he would explain exactly which he wants what minorities to stop running roughshod over. i would love to hear him explain it without a crowd cheering him on. the clip of senator rapert was first reported by lee fang at "the nation." he points that senator rapert got a lot of money from corporations on his way into office. eli lilly, nucor, based in south carolina. verizon. also, of course the koch brothers who targeted arkansas and spent there to turn the legislature from blue to red, which did happen, including the reelection of senator ultrasound roughshod minorities jason rapert. but something else is going on in arkansas.

because the "minorities running roughshod" guy is not alone in arkansas. they're kind of making a habit of this thing recently. in the arkansas legislature, you've also got the state republican lawmaker whose letters to the local paper include the one where he said, quote, if slavery were so god awful, why didn't jesus or paul condemn it? why was it in the constitution? and why wasn't there a war before 1861? that was an arkansas republican state representative writing in 2009. arkansas also has the state republican lawmaker who put his views on the subject of slavery in a book. quote, the institution of slavery that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people may have actually been a blessing in disguise. an arkansas representative in a book he published in 2010. after the views of both gentlemen came to broader public light, both of those blessings got voted out of office this past november, along with another rep who argued that everyone in america who is muslim should be deported to another country.

he said parents should be allowed at least limited access to the death penalty for their children. you should be allowed to kill your kid. arkansas republican state rep wrote that in a book in 2012. those three republican state legislators in arkansas all lost to democrats in this past election, even though the past election was one in which republicans won both chambers of the legislature in arkansas for the first time in reconstruction. and that was thanks in part to a lot of corporate money. jason rapert is from a district that leans democratic. but thanks to his very well funded campaign -- thank you, verizon -- he didn't get voted out at all. he is still keeping the state of arkansas safe from "the minorities running roughshod over what you people believe in." arkansas, what is going on there? what is going on with you guys?

okay. so it's friday, but we are not doing an official cocktail moment tonight. however, if one was going to put together a little something special to get ready for our final story tonight, i realize now that it might be helpful to know in advance that our final story tonight pays homage to the honey badger. so this isn't a cocktail moment, but i feel duty-bound to tell you that there is a variation on the whiskey sour that is made with honey that's really good. it's called the gold rush. this is what it is. it's two ounces of bourbon, a

half ounce of fresh lemon and a half ounce of honey syrup. to make the honey syrup you do two parts hot water, one part honey. you stir it up until it dissolves. a half ounce of, that a half ounce of lemon, two ounces of bourbon. shake it up. strain it over ice. honey badgers love that i'm just [ female announcer ] going to sleep may be easy, but when you wake up in the middle of the night it can be frustrating. it's hard to turn off and go back to sleep. intermezzo is the first and only prescription sleep aid approved for use as needed in the middle of the night when you can't get back to sleep. it's an effective sleep medicine you don't take before bedtime. take it in bed only when you need it and have at least four hours left for sleep. do not take intermezzo if you have had an allergic reaction

to drugs containing zolpidem, such as ambien. allergic reactions such as shortness of breath or swelling of your tongue or throat may occur and may be fatal. intermezzo should not be taken if you have taken another sleep medicine at bedtime or in the middle of the night or drank alcohol that day. do not drive or operate machinery until at least 4 hours after taking intermezzo and you're fully awake. driving, eating, or engaging in other activities while not fully awake without remembering the event the next day have been reported. abnormal behaviors may include aggressiveness, agitation, hallucinations, or confusion. alcohol or taking other medicines that make you sleepy may increase these risks. in depressed patients, worsening of depression, including risk of suicide, may occur. intermezzo, like most sleep medicines, has some risk of dependency. common side effects are headache, nausea, and fatigue. so if you suffer from middle-of-the-night insomnia, ask your doctor about intermezzo and return to sleep again.

♪

on september 24th, 1980, congressman henry hyde announced that the state judiciary committee would consider a resolution to begin impeachment proceedings against president bill clinton. we remember impeachment time as newt gingrich and the house republicans battling against the white house with the help of the conservative movement on the outside. but, you know, there was an outside effort fighting back against the conservative side too. on september 18th of that year, husband and wife software development team from silicon valley launched this online petition. see the title there? "censure and move on." it was a one-sentence petition.

the congress must immediately censure president clinton and move on to other pressing issues facing the country. censure and move on. that petition signed up 100,000 people in a week. and then half a million people within a couple of months. they delivered hundreds of thousands of petitions to the house. they swamped congressional switchboard was a quarter of a million phone calls. they wrangled meetings with more than 200 representatives. and what blew everybody's mind at the time was not that they got hundreds of thousands of people to sign this pet addition, essentially taking president clinton's side in this fight back in 1998. what blew everybody's mind, the amazing thing that everybody thought was so incredible about it was that they did this thing using the computer machine. here is how the "washington post" led its story about the "censure and move on" campaign.

the story was written february 1st, 1999. how can there be such a phenomenon as electronic political activism? what is so active about clicking a mouse button when sending an e-mail or logging on to a website? but with $13 million and more than 650,000 volunteer hours pledged to censure and move on, the realm of political activism now must bend its boundaries to include cyberspace. the article concludes by referring to censure and move on's brand of internet activists as "word of mouse." get it? word of mouse. "usa today" referred to this new trend as e-politics in their august 1999 article on the subject. their piece revealed that there were skeptics of this new e-politics. quote, online politics has its share of skeptics. no medium that relies on voters to take the initiative for educating themselves can ever have the broad reach of tv where political messages intrude unbidden into living rooms. will it revolutionize mix? that's harder to say. so said ari fleischer in 1999 before he became white house press secretary. ah, this computer thing, it's just a flash in the pan. in all fairness, though, it was not just ari fleischer. pretty much everybody in 1999 was agog with what these california software geeks were doing with the internets and how it was affecting politics maybe some day in the future. of course, house republicans did go ahead with the impeachment

process. so the censure and move on folks decided that they would not fold up. they decided to use the amazing magical power of the internet machine to try to make at least some of the pro-impeachment republicans pay for that stance. the folks with the online petition decided to reinvent themselves as a pac in 1999. they endorsed and started fundraising for a handful of progressive congressional candidates. again, the novelty was not that they were a pressure group on the left taking democrats' side in fights with republicans. the novelty and what seemed so weird about them was that they were doing this political work by using the click click, tappety-tap machine that kids were using these days. a report in december 1999, slate magazine wrote e-mailed 25,000 folks to had pledged as well to others on the mailing list. they raised a quarter million in phi days and have harvested another quarter million since, without any further solicitation. they did it just using the computer. just using word of mouse. that first electoral gambit was for the 2000 election. and three of moveon's five candidates won. despite the computer skeptics,

moveon.org ended up becoming a big deal in lefty politics. they raised money and direct it to support progressive candidates and causes. but they also hone and choose their messaging through interaction with their many, many members. moveon ends up being like a mega collective crowd-sourced advisory group for your lefty issue of choice. and the results end up being effective and pretty aggressive messages that end up in some cases using the right spokespeople. >> i want to talk to you about women. >> and about mitt romney. >> mitt romney's for ending funding to planned parenthood. >> including cancer screenings. >> he said he would overturn roe v. wade. >> we have republicans trying to redefine rain. >> trying to force women to undergo invasive ultra sounds. >> if you think that this election won't affect you in

your life, think again. >> so they've got money, yes. and they've got reach, absolutely. they've got millions of members. and part of that, and the part of the way they have been able to hold on to them all these years is because of further innovation on their part. they have sort of a one-click user experience. if you think about amazon.com online, amazon organize nighed their interface specifically so you can get through it very quickly. you don't have to click on a lot of different things and go through different screens or enter a lot of data in order to buy something. it is easy and fast to buy stuff there, particularly once you

have done it once. and that keeps you coming back as a customer. that's the same approach that moveon took for political activism starting back in 1999. one of the moveon founders then called it five-minute activism. slate said at the time that five-minute activism may become the fastest, fieriest method ever devised for channeling citizen outreach -- outrage, excuse me. so if you have a political impulse or political feeling, moveon tries to give you a way to actualize that in a satisfying way that doesn't make you feel like you just did something sketchy, and that makes you feel like you might want to do that again that was easy. that accomplished the goal i wanted to accomplish. i will bookmark and come back and do that again. the group's commitment to manifestation in the election in a way that was seen as controversial and had its skeptics, but show how it they continue to push the envelope. moveon this year sent voter report cards to 12 million registered voters in battleground states. these report cards showed each voter how often they had voted in recent elections, and how their frequency of voting stacked up against their neighbor's frequency of voting. it's a controversial method, but it is tested. it is effective, and nobody else is doing it. not at least until people start copying moveon for doing it. everybody in politics talks about tapping the grassroots and talks about how public polling is on their side for the issue. but having a political impact means turning those intangible

theoretical political assets into real political action that has an effect. that is what makes for effective political pressure. and now one of the veteran in the trenches advocacy groups on an old school political issue has just brought on a new young leader who has come up through the most innovative part of the lefty political world, including years at moveon. also including the liberal watchdog group media matters for america that drives the right nuts. also including a superpac aimed at changing the influence of money and politics, a group she helped found. and as of today, this new young leader replaces nancy keenan, the long-standing head of naral pro-choice in america. nancy keenan came on the show to talk about her decision to step down this past summer. she made the decision she said specifically to make room for a new generation of leaders who have new ideas and have learned new ways to accomplish things in politics. joining us now for her first interview is the new president of naral is ilyse hogue. thanks for being here.

>> thank you for having me, rachel. it's great to be here. >> what do you think of that context from electoral politics and moveon to the abortion rights fight. these have been seen as two totally different sectors of lefty politics. but do you represent some sort of crossover? >> well, i hope so. i mean, first of all, it was great to hear such a thorough history of my institutional alma mater. i haven't heard it in a long time. look, moveon was founded on some very basic principles that couldn't be more applicable right now to women's empowerment and choice movements. one was that politics is often slow to catch up to where the cultural heartbeat is, right? and we're seeing that now. "wall street journal" poll on the roe anniversary showed seven in ten americans support upholding roe. we have actually successfully mainstreamed choice into our culture. politics is slow to catch up. and moveon knew that. so one of the reasons that moveon has always been successful is by finding innovative ways to use technology to surface the

breadth of support for these mainstream ideas. nothing is more mainstream right now than the idea that women should have the freedom to write their own destinies. and foundational to that freedom is our ability to choose when and how and with whom we have a family. when women can do that, we can dream big dreams. we can contribute to culture, business, government, and then countries function better, business, marketplaces function better, and families and communities function better. and i hope that i can bring the tools and the organizing from moveon to bring millions and millions of women's voices into this debate about what our own futures are going to look like. >> because the fight over choice and reproductive rights, we think of it as a national fight, and sort of a constant national fight. but it really the rubber hits the road in the state. >> absolutely. >> and all these district fights, a lot of them happen

simultaneously. when you talk about "surfacing the breadth of support for choice," what is the most effective, most important way that support for choice could surface, could be made manifest in a way that would affect what is happening in the states? >> well, i mean, i think that there is no one way, right? one of the listens of the moveon era is the understanding of the reinforcing dynamic between the online and the offline organizing. we had boots on the ground from 2004 on. great advantage of naral pro-choice america is we've had boots on the ground since '69. so our choice out loud program, our new technological platform that allows young women to tell their own stories about what choice means to them, that actually reinforces the real-life activists that we have on the ground who are both doing excellent front lines work on defensive battles like in texas, where half of poor women no longer have access to health care, much less safe and legal abortion because of the defunding of planned parenthood, to the front lines in oregon. oregon is a state where we have a long-time leadership where not a single restriction has been put on abortion since casey. it's the only state in the union. we are poised through our naral

leadership and all the activists we touch there to go on offense, to actually see how we can make politics and legislative work catch up to the whole range of choices that women face in the modern-day world. >> ilyse hogue, brand-new president of naral pro-choice america as of today. ilyse, stay in touch. thank you so much. >> i appreciate it, rachel. all right. still ahead, honey badger, wolverines, weasels, and other threats to our democracy. a big development to report

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a big development to report in the republican party today as it relates to the united states senate. for whatever reason, former senator scott brown is, whatever, not going to run for the united states senate seat that was just vacated by john kerry. whatever. a lot was hinging on this announcement, a hotly anticipated decision from scott brown. but in the end when he decided to make the announcement, he did it by sending a text message. you are the first to know i am not running. the future senator breaking up with all of our hopes and dreams, by way of child-like

text messages. nobody knows why he is not running, maybe he will run for governor, and talk to queens and kings and see what he should do. but he is not running for john kerry's senate seat. they put out a statement saying there are many personal republicans in massachusetts who could run for the seat. she just did not name any of them. so massachusetts republicans seemed very surprised that scott brown is not running and do not seem to have an idea on what to do next. watch this space.

one when -- when well fell and fully grown, the honey badgers stretch along the east indiana ocean and africa. despite being called badgers, they are technically mustalids, think timberwolves, think pole cat. they're all kin to the honey

badger. now, when honey badgers kill something, they eat the whole carcass down to the last toe bone. they will raid beehives and eat toruses, they do what they want, no questions, no fear, they famously do not care. >> oh, it has a cobra, runs back wards, now watch this, it snakes up in the tree, it doesn't care, it just takes what it wants. >> last week on this show we compared the elected republicans of the great state of michigan to the honey badger, because the michigan republicans don't believe a care. at the time they planned to rig the election, so effectively the democrat couldn't win office again. the plan was to change the way

we vote for president, under current law, most states allocate the votes to the winner as a whole. the plan was to change this in several blue states, states that vote democratic in presidential elections, they wouldn't do it everywhere, just some states. so oklahoma and arkansas and other safe red states, they would continue to deliver every single one of their electoral votes to the republican candidate for president. they wouldn't change a thing there. blue states like michigan or virginia, they would have to give away more than half of their votes to the republican side. so the red state gets the whole electoral votes. but a blue state just gets some of those votes.

you still have to give some of them to the republican, the result, of course is the giant thumb on the scale for the republican hopefuls. earlier we talked about whether or not republicans are trying to make this change, florida, virginia, wisconsin, ohio, michigan and pennsylvania. but then as the story got more attention in the news, the republicans in those states started to back off. florida's house speaker said his party didn't need to change the rules, he said they, meaning republicans, just need to get better. and bob mcdonald said he was against the idea, so were a couple of key republicans in the senate. and this week, they voted it down in committee. in wisconsin, wisconsin's republican governor scott walker said he thought the idea was interesting. after that got a lot of attention back home, he said he had serious concerns about it. in ohio, where the republicans floated the idea days after the election, he and the republicans

now say oh, nobody in ohio is talking about doing this thing. so that is florida, virginia, wisconsin and ohio deciding to not try to pull this off. but michigan? michigan is different. michigan, they just had their sneak attack right to work law that they came out in favor of. introduced, passed -- they came out in favor of it, introduced it, signed it into law all within a space of a week during an election in which they never mentioned it. voters repealed it. michigan republicans responded by just passing another one in the way that it couldn't be repealed this time. you know, the will of the voters. michigan republicans don't give a bleep about bad press or the will of the voters, or doing what they said they would do, and they do not care. so as republicans were bailing on this plan to rig the